


stolen moments

by lost_decade



Category: Formula E RPF
Genre: André is scared of commitment, I wrote something slightly less angsty than usual, Jev is a romantic, M/M, they adore each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 10:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14809823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_decade/pseuds/lost_decade
Summary: “I think about you,” Jean-Éric confesses, because he's come this far and he'd rather know than not. “When we’re apart, I think about being with you. Not just in hotel rooms and at the back of the garage.” He takes a deep breath, “More than that.”





	stolen moments

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from Tumblr cos it's a little long for there really. Set during the Nürburgring 24 Hours when Jev was in Milan for the 4Hrs of Monza.

It’s almost midnight, thick fog blanketing the Nordschliefe as the rain sluices down on the asphalt.  Such a contrast to the balmy Milanese evening, still pleasant enough to lie in bed with the balcony doors open even given the late hour. The lights are off, the only brightness in the room coming from the streetlights outside and the screen of Jean-Éric’s phone.

He can’t stay up all night watching this, not with having a race of his own the next day, but it’s hard to sleep with the thought of André in the car, the slight worry mixed with pride keeping him wide awake.

The way he's let himself fall is reckless, his heart - guarded for so long - now given away with only the barest awareness of it happening. You're not supposed to fall for them, he knows, you can flirt and fuck, press against each other on the podium and it won't even matter who knows, not in Formula E - they all want to believe it anyway.  But you're not supposed to really mean it, that should be something reserved for retirement, for a girl or guy who'll settle down with you. Jean-Éric can't imagine André ever settling down with anyone.

Even with this in mind it's impossible to stop, harder still to want to, even with the inevitable warnings from his friends - he suspects Sam's reaction when they spoke after Paris would've been far more irate had Jean-Éric not just won his home race, as it is the vague grumblings about _keeping your boyfriend in check_ had washed over Jean-Éric without sinking in very far.  As it is he has a habit of committing to things a hundred percent and following them through to the end, be it bitter or otherwise. Hopefully not bitter, not this time.

He tabs away from the livestream of the race for a minute, opening his messages and typing a simple _stay safe out there_ _._ André won’t read it for another hour or so but it makes Jean-Éric smile just to think of the moment when he does.  Not that he has to give André tips on how to drive. Fuck he really has got it bad. He falls asleep with his hand wrapped lazily around his dick and the image of André at the wheel of the Porsche in his head.

 _Spicy out there,_ is the message that Jean-Éric wakes up to. It's around 3 and the breeze from the open door is cool on his bare skin, the sheets half kicked off in some dream that he can no longer remember. The text was sent only a few minutes ago and Jean-Éric takes a chance.

“You should be asleep,” André chastises when he answers the call. He sounds stressed, the admission that the mechanics have been working on the car for thirty minutes and they'll be fuck knows how far back if they finally make it out of the garage again, explains why. Jean-Éric knows the feeling, longs to be there, if only to provide a distraction; he knows André won't rest.

“I miss you,” he confesses, once they've talked over the race a little.

“You miss being here to sneak into the garage to play some prank on me, you mean,” André laughs.

“Always. But I mean it, André.”

It feels confessional, this, lying here in the darkness, stealing time they don't have. Jean-Éric wants to hear it back, some confirmation that he's not the only one.

“I haven’t done this before you know,” André replies obliquely, a tension in his voice that belies the ease they’ve developed around each other. Jean-Éric holds his breath for a moment, exhaling softly and picking up the phone from where it lies on the pillow.

It feels wrong to have it on speaker for this, as if André’s words are to be whispered into Jean-Éric’s ears alone and kept from the cavernous darkness of yet another hotel room. He pulls on a robe, stepping out onto the narrow balcony, tiles cool beneath his feet and the air heavy with pollen that catches in his throat a little.

“Haven’t done what?” Jean-Éric leans on the railing, looking absently at the street below, quiet save for the last trickle of people making their way home after the clubs have kicked out. He pictures André in the motorhome, rain against the windows. Unbidden and unwanted, an image from Suzuka in 2014 slips into his mind, making him shiver.

“I haven’t let anyone close to me,” André says, slowly and as if it’s a struggle. “Not in a way that matters.”

The implication has Jev’s heart reeling. “But you have now?” he asks.

André’s answering laughter is light, as if he’s ready to brush this all off as nothing more than the standard friends with benefits arrangement that Jean-Éric figures he’s had with teammates and other drivers in the past, should Jev dismiss it as nothing more than that.

“What do you think, Jev?”

“I think about you,” Jean-Éric confesses, because he's come this far and he'd rather know than not. “When we’re apart, I think about being with you. Not just in hotel rooms and at the back of the garage.” He takes a deep breath, “More than that.”

“Okay,” André replies, confusingly, something and nothing. Jean-Éric is overcome with the need to make a joke, to save this for another day when he doesn’t have a race in a few hours, when André isn’t due back in the car for his next stint soon. Yet if they leave it he doesn’t know whether André will broach the subject again, and if André doesn’t then would he do it himself? Is it worth the risk, letting it slide? Most of the drivers have fooled around with each other to some extent but he knows of so few who’ve made it last into anything more, his own aborted attempt a weight that has not that long lifted. It’d be crazy to try it again, potentially career damaging, yet there’s a recklessness that pulls him forward and it’s a wave that’s easy to sail.

“I want to be with you,” Jean-Éric says solemnly into the Italian night. And because he’s committed himself to it now, adding “as your boyfriend,” half wishing he was drunk so he could blame it on that when the sun comes up and he’s sitting on the starting grid wondering if everything will have changed by the time they’re in the sim in Paris next week.

He wets his lips, mouth suddenly dry. There’s the sound of a door opening and closing, muffled voices in the background of the call and then André exhaling.

“I don’t know how to do relationships,” André tells him. “I might fuck it up big style, if we had a fight and then I crash into you…” he trails off, but Jean-Éric can tell that he’s smiling.

“You already crashed into me. I think it’s a chance worth taking.”

“You got under my skin,” André says and Jev releases the breath he didn’t realise he was holding. “I didn’t realise I wanted you there. But I do. Want you I mean. In every way.”

“Me too,” Jean-Éric replies, meaning it with a conviction he never thought he’d regain at his lowest moments.

He can hear the rain falling in the background, imagines kissing the wetness of it from André’s skin like champagne on the podium. Could they ever, he wonders. Would they have the balls to be public someday? It’s too soon to think of.

“Get out there and win for me later, yeah,” André says before they hang up.  

“I’ll give it everything.”

Jean-Éric stays standing on the balcony for another few minutes after hanging up the call, smoking an illicit cigarette as the sky begins to lighten, thinking over all the twists and turns his life has taken over the past few years. He wouldn’t change it.

It's the first time he can say that and honestly mean it.


End file.
